This invention relates in general to toy water guns and in particular to a pump-less toy water gun that utilizes a readily available reservoir that is easily fillable from a household source of pressurized water, such as a garden hose or a water spigot.
Water pistols (or squirt guns) have been popular toys for many years. Their drawbacks are well known and include the need to continually pump limited capacity and range, difficulty in refilling, etc. A common type of water gun has a trigger-operated pump mechanism for pressurizing and ejecting a relatively small, short duration jet of water. More recently, water guns that incorporate a large reservoir of water, that is pressurized by pumping have become popular. This latter type of water gun is capable of propelling a jet of water farther and for a duration that is controlled by the depression of the trigger mechanism (so long as there is pressure in the reservoir). The vast majority of such water guns include a manually-operated pump for developing a pressure head of air in the water reservoir. Operation of a trigger controls the water formation and duration of the water jet.
The so-called "single shot" water guns (with a non-pressurized water reservoir and a trigger pump) are limited in range and the length and duration of the water jet is a function of a user's skill in manipulating the trigger. These water guns are of relatively low cost construction and use the interior of a hollow plastic gun body as the (non-pressurized) water reservoir. Pressurized reservoir types of water guns require a great deal of manual pumping to produce a suitable pressure head in the reservoir. The reservoir (or reservoirs in the case of multiple reservoir guns) are often removable for refilling. Even so, refilling the removable reservoirs requires some dexterity on the user's part and is a slow and messy task. Also, the cost of such water guns is very high.
The water gun of the invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art devices and is characterized by no pumping, high capacity, ruggedness, long and accurate shooting, low cost and ease of filling and operation. The body of the inventive water gun comprises a handle that houses a trigger and a nozzle, and in the preferred embodiment, includes a hose thread coupling end for connection to a source of household pressurized water (such as a spigot or a garden hose) and a reservoir coupling end. The reservoir coupling end has a bottle thread that is adapted to engage the threaded end of an empty one- or a two-liter PET type plastic bottle, such as are commonly used for carbonated soft drinks and the like. In one version of the invention, the plastic bottle is affixed to the handle which also includes a weighted end flexible siphon tube that extends into the reservoir for permitting operation of the squirt gun with the reservoir higher or lower than the handle. In another version, a backpack is provided for holding one or more of the reservoir bottles which are coupled by an adapter to the handle via a manifold and a flexible tube. Refilling is accomplished through the hose coupling on the handle and is automatically stopped when the trapped air in the reservoir is pressurized to the pressure of the water source. The reservoir bottles need not be removed for refilling either in the attached mode or in the backpack mode. In a special feature of the invention, a special sealing end on the reservoir bottle thread coupling is provided to make a seal with a collar that is adjacent the threaded end of the reservoir bottle. This collar is only present in PET type plastic bottles and the arrangement precludes use of other containers with bottle cap threads, i.e. glass bottles. Still another version of the invention uses a separable two piece handle with a male hose thread on the upper portion fitting with a female hose thread coupling on the lower portion.